Mar. 3


GERMANY:

German car firm 'used hair from Auschwitz'

Rolls of textiles made by Schaeffler 'contain hair from 40,000 death camp
inmates'


One of the pillars of German industry, the giant but debt-crippled
Schaeffler car parts supplier, was accused yesterday of using hair shorn
from at least 40,000 Auschwitz death camp prisoners to make textiles at
its factories in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Second World War.

The highly disturbing allegations were contained in new evidence unearthed
by Polish historians at the Auschwitz museum, who said they had found
rolls of fabric made from camp inmates' hair at a former Schaeffler
factory in Poland's southern region of Silesia.

The discovery was the latest in a series of damaging blows for the ailing
Schaeffler concern, which employs 200,000 people worldwide. The company is
currently saddled with debts totalling 14bn (12.6bn) and faces the
prospect of bankruptcy.

Last month, Maria-Elisabeth Schaeffler, the concern's flamboyant and
usually fur-coated millionaire owner, appeared at a trade union rally and
wept openly as she appealed to the government of the German Chancellor,
Angela Merkel, for a state-funded bailout. In an attempt to clear up
rumours about the company's wartime role, Mrs Schaeffler recently admitted
to using slave labourers at its factories during the Second World War.
However, the company's officially published history still only begins in
1946.

The company's own historian dismissed the allegations yesterday and said
there was no evidence to support the theory that Schaeffler processed
death camp inmates' hair industrially during the Second World War.

But Dr Jacek Lachendro, a historian at the Auschwitz museum, told
Germany's Der Spiegel television channel that 1.95 tonnes of cloth made
from inmates' hair had been discovered at a former Schaeffler textile and
army tank parts factory in the town of Kiertz (formerly Katscher) after
the Germans withdrew at the end of the war.

The amount of cloth, which was pictured on Spiegel television as rolls of
closely-woven brownish fabric, was said to have derived from the hair
shorn from some 40,000 Auschwitz prisoners. Dr Lachendro said that
subsequent analysis of the hair showed that some of it contained traces of
the Zyklon B gas used by the Nazis to murder millions in the death camps.

Former workers at the factory in Kiertz who were interviewed on the
programme said that they remembered two wagon-loads of human hair being
delivered to the company in 1943. Kiertz is three hours' drive away from
the Auschwitz camp.

Hair was routinely shorn from prisoners, usually on arrival, at the death
camps. The Nazi war machine used it to make army blankets and socks for
U-boat crews. The Auschwitz museum on the site of the former death camp
displays a store filled to the roof with inmates' hair originally intended
for so-called "human recycling".

The Kiertz textile factory where the hair is alleged to have been
processed formerly belonged to the Jewish-owned Davistan AG concern on
which the Schaeffler empire was founded after it was taken over by the
brothers Wilhelm and Georg Schaeffler. Their company made armaments for
the Nazi war machine, but after the Second World War it re-emerged as one
of Germany's main suppliers of parts to the car industry, specialising in
needle roller bearings.

However, the devastating impact of the credit crunch coupled with
Schaeffler's misjudged hostile takeover of the tyre giant Continental have
since plunged the concern into its worst crisis since the war.

Maria-Elisabeth Schaeffler, an Austrian born former medical student,
married into the concern and became its sole owner in 1996 after her
husband, Georg, died. Last month she took the unprecedented step of
joining a demonstration staged by 800 of her company's employees to appeal
for government help. Previously, the company's management style had been
called "feudal".

Mrs Merkel's government, which is currently being asked to provide state
aid for Germany's ailing Opel car company, has still to decide whether it
will help Schaeffler with a bailout.

(source: Reuters)

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Study: Some German schools kept Nazi names
Published: Feb. 5, 2009 at 2:05 PMOrder reprints | Feedback
CHEMNITZ, Germany, Feb. 5 (UPI) -- Several schools in Germany are still
named after supporters of the Nazi Party despite the party's history of
genocide and hatred, a study has found.

Historian Geralf Gemser found that several schools in the German state of
Saxony remain adorned with the names of individuals who were either
high-ranking Nazi members or who supported the party's infamous German
regime, Der Spiegel said Thursday.

Eight of the estimated 2,000 schools in Saxony are named after Nazi party
members, Gemser said. An additional three Saxony schools were named after
members of the Nazi party's Sturmabteilung paramilitary group, while one
features the name of a Schutzstaffel, or SS, member.

Gemser said while schools traditionally aren't named after actual war
crime suspects, such educational sites should take action to prevent being
linked to the notorious Nazi empire, Der Spiegel reported.

"With their names, schools occupy a place in a historical tradition and
Nazi supporters and functionaries should be excluded from that," the
historian said.

(source: United Press International)




USA--CALIFORNIA:

Holocaust-denying Bishop banned


Holocaust-denying British Bishop Richard Williamson will not be allowed to
enter any Roman Catholic church, school or other facility in the
Archdiocese of Los Angeles, it has been decided.

Cardinal Roger Mahony published the ban in a joint statement with two
members of the American Jewish Committee.

Mr Williamson is one of four members of an ultra-traditionalist group who
were excommunicated. He denied the Holocaust in a previously taped
interview broadcast in January on the same day the Pope lifted his
excommunication.

Mr Mahony's statement makes no mention of any plans by Mr Williamson to
visit Los Angeles, but it notes that the situation has given many
religious and civic leaders an opportunity to acknowledge the Holocaust.

(source: Press Association)